H. G. Wells of England
H. G. Wells in his Outline of History seldom seems just an Englishman. He fights his battles and makes most of his judgments alone and generally in defiance of the traditions of his countrymen, but he is not bold enough to face Napoleon Bonaparte all by himself. The sight of the terrible little Corsican peeping over the edge of the thirty-eighth chapter sends Wells scurrying from his solitude into the center of a British square. It must be that when Wells was little and bad his nurse told him that if he did not eat his mush or go to bed, or perform some other necessary function in the daily life of a child, Old Bony would get him. And Wells is still scared. He takes it out, of course, by pretending that Napoleon has been vastly overrated and remarks that it was pretty lucky for him that he lost Trafalgar and never got to England, where troops would have made short work of him.
Nelson, Wells holds, was just as great a figure in his own specialty as Napoleon in his, but if so it seems a pity that he did not rise to Wellsian heights of strategy and lose Trafalgar so that Napoleon might land and be defeated by British pluck and skill. Then, indeed, might Waterloo have been won upon the cricket fields of Eton.
Not only does Wells insist on regarding Napoleon through national lenses but through moral ones also. Speaking of his accession as First Consul, Wells writes: "Now surely here was opportunity such as never came to man before. Here was a position in which a man might well bow himself in fear of himself, and search his heart and serve God and man to the utmost."
That, of course, was not Napoleon's intent. His performance must be judged by his purpose, and it seems to us that Wells doesn't half appreciate how brilliant was the stunt which Napoleon achieved. "He tried to do the impossible and did it." Man was no better for him and neither was God, but he remains still the great bogy man of Europe, a bogy great enough to have frightened Mr. Wells and marked him. Here was a man who took life and made it theatrical. It was an achievement in popular æsthetics, if nothing else, but Wells doesn't care about æsthetics. Perhaps even a moral might be extracted from the life of Napoleon. He proved the magic quality of personality and the inspiration of gesture. Some day the same methods may be used to better advantage.
The institution of the Legion of Honor Wells calls "A scheme for decorating Frenchmen with bits of ribbon which was admirably calculated to divert ambitious men from subversive proceedings." But these same bits of ribbon and the red and green ones of the Croix de Guerre and the yellow and green of the Médaille Militaire were later to save France from the onrush of the Germans. Without decorations, without phrases and without the brilliant and effective theatrical oratory of French officers, from marshals to sub-lieutenants, France would have lost the great war. Everybody who saw the French army in action realized that its morale was maintained during the worst days by colored ribbons and florid speeches. Even the stern and taciturn Pershing learned the lesson, and before he had been in France three months he was about making speeches to wounded men in which he told them that he wished that he, too, were lying in hospital with all their glory. Personally, it never seemed to me that Pershing actually convinced any wounded doughboy of his enthusiasm for such a change, but he did not use the gesture with much skill. He lacked the Napoleonic tradition.
Another American officer, a younger one, said, "If I ever have anything to do with West Point I'm going to copy these Frenchmen. They do it naturally, but we've got to learn. I'm going to introduce a course in practical theatricalism. Now, if I were a general, as soon as I heard of some little trench raid in which Private Smith distinguished himself I'd send a staff officer down on the sly to find out what Smith looked like. Then I'd inspect that particular organization and when I got to Smith my aide would nudge me and I'd turn, as if instinctively, and say, 'Isn't that Private Smith who distinguished himself on the evening of January 18 at 8 o'clock? I want to shake your hand, Smith.' Why, man, the French army has been living and breathing on stuff like that for the last two years."
It is an easy matter to satirize the heroic and theatrical gesture. The French themselves did it. Once in the Chamber of Deputies, late in the war, a Radical member, who didn't care much for the war, anyway, and still less for the Cabinet, arose and said: "This morning as I was walking in the streets of Paris a little before dawn I saw three camions headed for the front, and I stopped the first driver and said, 'Ah, I am overjoyed to see that at last the ministry is awake to the needs of our brave poilus and is sending supplies to the front. What is it that you carry – ammunition, clothing, food?' But the driver shook his head and said, 'No; Croix de Guerre.'"
But the satire does not cut too deeply, for Croix de Guerre played just as important a part in winning the war as food or ammunition or clothing. I heard a French colonel once cry to a crowd of prisoners returned from Germany, broken and ill: "Now, let us hear you shout that which it has been so long forbidden to you to say, 'Vive la France!'" And as he spoke his arm shot up into the air and his voice rang like a trumpet call, and everybody within sound of the man straightened up and thrilled as if he had just heard of a great victory. It was fine art for all the fact that it was probably also sincere.
No, when Napoleon had himself crowned in Nôtre Dame it was not, as Wells says, "Just a ridiculous scene." Napoleon realized that a play can be staged in a cathedral or upon a battlefield just as well as in a theater, and that man, who may come in time to be the superman of whom Wells dreams is still a little boy sitting in the gallery, ready to applaud and to shout for any dressed-up person who knows how to walk to the center of the stage and hold it.
Promises and Contracts and Clocks
"I am one of those people," says the flapper in Beauty and Mary Blair, "to whom life is a very great puzzle. So many people seem to get used to living, but I don't. I can't seem to get up any really satisfactory philosophy or find anybody or anything to help me about it. I want everything, little or big, fixed up in mind before I can proceed.
"Even as a very small child I always wanted my plans made in advance. Once, when mother had a bad sick headache, I sat on the edge of her bed and begged her to tell me if she thought she was going to die, so if she was I could plan to go and live with my Aunt Margaret. I was an odious infant, but all the same, I really wanted to know, and that's the way I am to this day! I want to know what the probabilities are, in order to act accordingly."
And without doubt she was odious, but only in the same way that practically everybody else is odious, for we live in a world which is governed by promises and contracts and clocks. If there actually is any such thing as free will, aren't we the idiots to fetter it! The chances of doing things on impulse are being continually diminished. There are points in the city now where it is not possible to cross the street without the permission of the policeman.
"Stop," "Go," "Keep Off the Grass," "No Trespassing," "Beware of the Dog," "Watch Your Hat and Overcoat," "Positively No Checks Cashed," "Do Not Feed or Annoy the Animals" – how can a free and adventurous soul survive in such a world? Don Marquis has celebrated the exploit of one brave rebel, we think it was Fothergil Finch, who strode into the monkey house and crying "Down with the tyranny of the capitalist system," or words to that effect, threw a peanut into the baboon's cage. We know an even bolder soul who makes a point of never watching his hat and overcoat in direct defiance of the edict, but he says that the world has become so cowed by rules that nothing ever happens.
Even the usual avenues of escape have been beset with barbed wire. There was liquor, for instance. There still is, but the prohibitionists have been devilishly wise. By arranging that it shall be ladled out by prescriptions, no matter how lavish, they have reduced drinking to the prosaic level of premeditation along with all the other activities of the world. Things have come to such a pass that drinking has now been restricted to men with real executive ability. It is no longer the solace of the irresponsible, but the reward of foresight.
Once the easy escape from dull and set routine lay in stepping on board a steamer and sailing for distant and purple shores. They are not so purple any more. No traveler can feel much like a free and footloose adventurer after he has spent two weeks in conference with the State Department, presented a certificate confirming the fact of his birth, gathered together the receipts of his income tax payments and obtained a letter from his pastor. Even though he go to the ends of the earth the adventurer travels only by the express and engraved permission of the United States government. Oceans and mountain ranges cannot alter the fact that he is on a leash. Of course, to free souls the whole system is monstrous. The fact that a man suddenly feels a desire to go to Greece on some rainy Tuesday afternoon is no sign at all that he will still want to go two weeks come Wednesday. The only proper procedure for the rebel is to obtain passports for a number of places for which he has not the slightest inclination on the hope that some day or other through a sudden change of wind he may be struck with yearning.
Train journeys are almost as bad as sea voyages. Go into any railroad station in town and ask the man at the window for a ticket and he will invariably inquire "Where do you want to go?" No provision is made for the casual traveler without a destination. The query "What trains have you got?" meets with scant courtesy. Our own system is to shop for trains. It is possible to walk up and down in front of the gates and look over the samples before making a selection, but our practice is to take the first one. To be sure this has let us into going to a good many places to which we didn't want to go, but it has also saved us from visiting any number of others to which we ought to go. Moreover, confidentially, we have one trick by which we slash through the red tape of railroad precision. Only last Thursday we told the man with a great show of determination that we wanted to go to Poughkeepsie and bought a ticket for that place. Then, when the conductor wasn't looking we slipped off at Tarrytown.
Going to the theater, getting married or divorced are all carried on under the same objectionable conditions. "Seats eight weeks in advance" say the advertisements of some of the popular shows and others. How can anybody possibly want to do something eight weeks in advance? It makes taking in a matinée a matter as dignified to all intents and purposes as writing a will or doing some other service for posterity.
There are in this country statesmen who worry from time to time that people do not marry as young as they used to, if at all. How can it be expected that they will? The life force is powerful and may prevail, but nature never had within its intent a license, witnesses, bridesmaids, a plain gold ring, a contract with the caterer, a bargain with the printer and an engagement with the minister.
Alcoholic Liquors
"The moment, now, had arrived for a Daiquiri," writes Joseph Hergesheimer in his San Cristobal de la Habana. "Seated near the cool drip of the fountain, where a slight stir of air seemed to ruffle the fringed mantone of a bronze dancing Andalusian girl, I lingered over the frigid mixture of Don Bacardi, sugar and a fresh, vivid green lime.
"It was a delicate compound, not so good as I was to discover later at the Telegrafo, but still a revelation, and I was devoutly thankful to be sitting at that hour in the Inglaterra with such a drink. It elevated my contentment to an even higher pitch, and, with a detached amusement, I recalled the fact that farther north prohibition was now in effect. Unquestionably the cocktail on my table was a dangerous agent, for it held in its shallow glass bowl slightly incrusted with undissolved sugar the power of a contemptuous indifference to fate; it set the mind free of responsibility; obliterating both memory and to-morrow, it gave the heart an adventitious feeling of superiority and momentarily vanquished all the celebrated, the eternal fears."
We wonder what they put into Mr. Hergesheimer's Daiquiri. It seems to us a rather optimistic and romantic account of the effect of a single cocktail. One of the reasons why we were reconciled to prohibition was the fact that we invariably felt cheated whenever we read any loving essay about rum. In the theater, too, again and again we saw some character raise a glass to his lips and immediately begin to sing about young love in May if he happened to be the hero, or fall down a flight of steps if he were cast as the low comedian. We tried earnestly enough, but these experiences were never duplicated for us. No songs came to our lips, nor comic tumbles to our feet. Nor did we ever participate in Mr. Hergesheimer's "contemptuous indifference to fate." It was not for us in one cocktail; no, not in many.
Occasionally, it was possible to reach a stage where we became acutely conscious of the fact that Armenians were being massacred and that Ireland was not yet free. And later we have known a very persuasive drowsiness. But as for contempt and a feeling of superiority and a freedom from the eternal fears, we never found the right bottle. There was none which opened for us any door of adventure. Once, we remember, while on our way from the office to Seventy-second Street, we rode in the subway to Van Cortlandt Park and, upon being told about it, traveled back to Atlantic Avenue. It was a long ride for a nickel, but it hardly satisfied us as authentic adventure.
Even the romantic stories of our friends generally seem to us inadequate. Only to-day A. W. said, "You should have come to the party. We played a new game called 'adverbs.' You send somebody out of the room and choose an adverb, and when she comes back you've got to answer all the questions in the spirit of that adverb. You know rudely, quickly, cryptically, or anything like that. And then Art did a burlesque of the second act of Samson and Delilah and Elaine passed out completely, and every time anybody woke her up she'd say, 'Call me a black and white ambulance.' You had ought to have come."
We couldn't have added anything to that party. When it came our turn to answer the questions in the adverb game it would be just our luck to have the chosen word "gracefully" or "seductively" or something like that, and probably the burlesque was no good anyhow unless one could get into the spirit of the thing. That is our traditional failure. Right at the beginning of a party we realize that it is our duty to get gay and put ice down people's backs and all that, and it terrifies us. Whenever a host says "Here, drink some more Scotch and liven up" we have the same sinking feeling that we used to get when one of our former city editors wrote in the assignment book opposite our name: "Go up to the zoo and write me a funny story."
The whole trouble with life so far is that too much of it falls into assignments. We're not even content to let our holidays just happen. Instead we mark them down on a calendar, and there they stay as fixed and set as an execution day. There are times, for instance, when we feel like turning over a new leaf and leading a better life and giving up cigarettes, but when we look at the calendar it isn't New Year's at all, but Fourth of July, and so nothing can be done about it. Columbus Day or Washington's Birthday generally comes just about the time we've worked up an enthusiasm for Lincoln, which has to go to waste, and the only strong impulse we ever had to go out and cut loose was spoiled because we noticed that everybody we met was wearing a white flower in his buttonhole and we remembered that it was Mother's Day. There are even times when we don't want to play cards or travel on railroad trains or read the newspapers or go to the movies, but these times never synchronize with Sunday.
When we first took up drinking we hoped that this would be one of the avenues of escape from schedule and assignment, but it didn't work out. Even here there were preliminaries and premeditation. First of all, it was necessary to cultivate a taste for the stuff, but that was only a beginning. There were still ceremonies to be complied with. Drunkenness never just descended on anybody like thunderstorm, rain or inspiration. It was not possible to go to sleep sober and wake up and find that somehow or other you had become intoxicated during the night. Always an act of will was required. A fixed determination, "I'm going to get drunk," must first be set, and then the rum has to be ordered and poured out and consumed pretty regularly. In fact, we never could look at a bottle without feeling that the label probably bore the express direction, "Take ten times every hour until relief is obtained." Even before the Volstead act liquor was spiritually a prescription rather than a beverage.
We never had the strength of character to get any good out of it. It's a fallacy, of course, to think of a chronic drunkard or a chronic anything as a person of weak will. Indeed, as a matter of fact, his will is so strong that he has been able to marshal all his energies into one channel and to make himself thereby a specialist. In all our life we have never met but two determined men. One took a cold bath every morning and the other got drunk every night.
Some of My Best Friends Are Yale Men
"Oh, Harvard was old Harvard when Yale was but a pup,
"And Harvard will be Harvard still when Yale has all gone up,
"And if any Eli – "
THIS is about as far as the old song should be carried. Perhaps it is too far. Our plea to-day is for something of abatement in the intensity of the rivalry between Harvard and Yale. To be sure we realize that the plea has been made before unsuccessfully by mightier men. Indeed it was Charles W. Eliot himself, president of Harvard, who rebuked the students when first they began to sing, "Three cheers for Harvard and down with Yale." This, he said, seemed to him hardly a proper spirit. He suggested an amendment so that the song might go, "Three cheers for Harvard and one for Yale." Such seventy-five percent loyalty was rejected. Yale must continue to do its own cheering.
Naturally, it is not to be expected that Yale and Harvard men should meet on terms of perfect amity immediately and that the old bitterness should disappear within the time of our own generation. Such a miracle is beyond the scope of our intention. Too much has happened. Just what it was that Yale originally did to Harvard we don't profess to know. It was enough we suppose to justify the trial of the issue by combat four times a year in the major sports. Curiously enough, for a good many years Yale seemed to grow more and more right if judged in the light of these tests. But the truth is mighty and shall prevail and the righteousness of Harvard's cause began to be apparent with the coming of Percy Haughton. God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach.
Our suggestion is that whatever deep wrong Yale once committed against Harvard, a process of diminution of feeling should be allowed to set in. After all, can't the men of Cambridge be broadminded about these things and remember that nothing within the power of Yale could possibly hurt Harvard very much? Even in the days when the blue elevens were winning with great regularity there should have been consolation enough in the thought that Harvard's Greek department still held the edge. Seemingly nobody ever thought of that. In the 1906 game a Harvard half-back named Nichols was sent in late in the game while the score was still a tie. On practically the first play he dropped a punt which led directly to a Yale touchdown and victory.
Throughout the rest of his university career he was known in college as "the man who dropped the punt." When his brother entered Harvard two years later he was promptly christened, and known for his next four years, as "the brother of the man who dropped the punt."
Isn't this a little excessive? It seems so to us, but the emphasis has not yet shifted. Only a month or so ago we were talking in New Haven before an organization of Yale graduates upon a subject so unpartisan as the American drama – though to be sure Harvard has turned out ten playwrights of note to every one from Yale – and somehow or other the talk drifted around to football. In pleading for less intensity of football feeling we mentioned the man who dropped the punt and his brother and told how Yale had recovered the fatal fumble on Harvard's nineteen-yard line. Then, with the intention of being jocose, we remarked, "The Yale eleven with characteristic bulldog grit and courage carried the ball over the line." To our horror and amazement the audience immediately broke into applause and long cheers.
Some of my best friends are Yale men and there is no basis for the common Harvard assumption that graduates of New Haven's leading university are of necessity inferior to the breed of Cambridge. Still, there is, perhaps, just a shade of difference in the keenness of perception for wit. Practically all the Harvard anecdotes about Yale which we know are pointed and sprightly, while Yale is content with such inferior and tasteless jibes as the falsetto imitation which begins "Fiercely fellows, sift through." Even the audience of graduates to which we referred was singularly cold to the anecdote about the difference in traditions which prevails at New Haven and at Cambridge. "When a Yale man is sick, the authorities immediately assume that he is drunk. When a Harvard man is drunk, the authorities assume that he is sick."
Nor were we successful in retelling the stirring appeal of a well-known organizer who was seeking to consolidate various alumni bodies into a vast unified employment agency for college men. "There should be," he cried, "one great clearing house. Then when somebody came for a man to tutor his children we could send him a Harvard man and if he needed somebody to help with the furnace, we'd have a Yale graduate for him."
Joking with undergraduates we found still more disastrous. After the last Harvard-Yale football game – score Harvard 9, Yale 0, which doesn't begin to indicate the margin of superiority of the winning team – we wrote an article of humorous intent for a New York newspaper. Naturally our job as a reporter prevented us from being partisan in our account of the game. Accordingly, in a temperate and fairminded spirit, we set down the fact that, through the connivance of the New York press, Yale has become a professional underdog and that any Harvard victory in which the score is less than forty-two to nothing is promptly hailed as a moral victory for Yale.
Developing this news angle for a few paragraphs, we eventually came to the unfortunate fist fight between Kempton of Yale and Gaston of Harvard which led to both men being put out of the game. It was our bad luck to see nothing but the last half second of the encounter. As a truthful reporter we made this admission but naturally went on to add, "Of course, we assume that Kempton started it." For weeks we continued to receive letters from Yale undergraduates beginning, "My attention has been called to your article" and continuing to ask with great violence how a reporter could possibly tell who started a fight without seeing the beginning of it. Some letters of like import were from Princeton men.
Princeton is always quick to rally to the defense of Yale against Harvard. This suggests a possibly common meeting ground for Harvard and Yale. Of course, they can hardly meet on the basis of a common language for the speech of Yale is quite alien. For instance, they call their "yard" a "campus." Also, there are obvious reasons why they cannot meet as equal members in the fellowship of educated men. Since this is a nonpartisan article designed to promote good feeling it will probably be just as well not to go into this. Though football is the chief interest at New Haven, Yale men often display a surprising sensitiveness to attacks on the scholarship of their local archaeologists. Nor will religion do as a unifier. Yale is evangelical and prays between the halves, while Harvard is mostly agnostic, if it isn't Unitarian. No, just one great cause can be discovered in which Harvard men and Yale men can stand shoulder to shoulder and lift their voices in a common cause. Each year some public spirited citizen ought to hire Madison Square Garden and turn it over to all graduates and undergraduates of Harvard and of Yale for a great get-together meeting in which past differences should be forgotten in one deep and full throated shout of "To Hell with Princeton!"